LC 31 
.G75 
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The Art of Life Series 

Self Culture 
through the Vocation 

Sv Edward Howard Grig-gs 




Class 
Book 



iC3l 



Gifr 



GopjTightls^ 



JO 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT 



The Art of Life Series 



?l^ 



BY THE SAME AUTHOR 

The Use of the Margin 
Human Equipment 
The Philosophy of Art 
The New Humanism 
A Book of Meditations 
Moral Education 



THE ART OF LIFE SERIES 
Edward Howard Griggs, Editor 



Self-Culture 
Through the Vocation 

BY 

EDWARD HOWARD GRIGGS 



:<^m^ 



w^jm 



NEW YORK 

B. W. HUEBSCH 

1914 



V3C3I 



Copyright, 1914, by 
EDWARD HOWARD GRIGGS 



FEB 16 1915 
©CLA3S3639 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

I The Vocation : Our Problem ... 9 

II Action versus Dreams 24 

III Dead Work 36 

IV Sham and Sincerity 45 

V Vocation and Avocation . -. . . 56 

VI Work: a Way of Life ..... 65 



THE VOCATION: OUR PROBLEM 

There Is to-day a nation-wide awaken- 
ing to the need of vocational education. 
We have come to see that if education 
is to equip adequately for happy and 
helpful life, it must prepare every in- 
dividual to take hold somewhere, in 
work that is worth while, and make 
an effective contribution. There is no 
more pathetic spectacle than the culti- 
vated ne'er-do-well — the man of fine 
appreciation and liberalized spirit, who 
is unable to do any one thing effectively; 
and so drifts through life, his refined 
sensibilities perpetually tortured by 
economic failure. Education fails if 
it does not do everything possible to 
avoid such tragedy. 



lo The Vocation: Our Problem 

On the other hand, education that 
makes the individual a mere cog-wheel 
in a productive machine, fails no less 
sadly. When a man becomes either a 
head or a hand, in the long run he does 
neither good head work nor good hand 
work. There must be a whole human 
being at work to get permanently good 
results in any field of action. It is pos- 
sible to "kill the goose that lays the 
golden egg" of economic prosperity; 
and the goose that lays the golden egg 
is manhood, womanhood and especially 
childhood, exploited for the sake of im- 
mediate commercial results. Such ex- 
ploitation is the true race suicide; and 
that nation will win and retain leader- 
ship, even in the economic struggle of 
the nations of the earth, that keeps its 
men, women and children human be- 
ings, first, and cog-wheels in a produc- 
tive machine, afterwards, if at all. 
Thus not only do we fail of cultivation 
for life, but the very aim of vocational 



The Vocation: Our Problem ii 

education itself is defeated, unless be- 
hind the training for specific action there 
Is the liberal cultivation of the mind and 
heart. 

Such life-education comes only in lim- 
ited degree through the schools. By far 
the larger part of it comes in life itself 
through the two great primary chan- 
nels of action and experience — the 
work that we do and the relations we 
sustain In love and friendship to other 
lives. When Goethe wishes to portray 
the whole development of a typical per- 
sonality in Faust, he divides the work 
into two parts : the first dealing with the 
little world of personal relationships 
and Introspective study, the second, with 
the larger world of action, in art, war, 
science, productive labor and philan- 
thropy. Thus the problem of life-cul- 
ture through the work Itself Is, though 
little recognized, even more Important 
than that of the education equipping 
for the work. 



12 The Vocation: Our Problem 

By far the larger part of our work, 
moreover, lies in our vocation — in 
what we choose, or are driven to un- 
dertake, as our business in life. This 
Is true for rich and poor alike. Even 
if one's work is not paid for in money 
or reputation, still what one regards as 
the life-call Is the main line of action. 
The problem of the vocation is, there- 
fore, constantly before all human be- 
ings, through the whole of life. 

Is it not strange that this problem is 
so little considered In ethical philos- 
ophy? I know but one great work 
focussing on the problem of self-culture 
through the vocation, and that is a 
novel — Goethe's Wilhelm Meister. 
One reason for this neglect Is doubt- 
less In the fact that the ethical philos- 
opher, only too often, has turned his 
back upon the real world of living prob- 
lems, retired into his study, and worked 
out his scheme of duties apart, for 
human nature as he Imagines it. The 



The Vocation: Our Problem 13 

result is an admirably logical theory, 
but often singularly inapplicable to life 
as we know it in experience. 

This attitude of the ethical thinker 
explains in part the relative neglect of 
all the concrete problems of life; but 
there is a further reason for the wide 
failure in the past to deal with the one 
before us. The vocation is our prob- 
lem, as it has concerned no previous 
epoch of man's existence. One need 
go back but a little way in history to 
find small respect for good, honest 
work. In classical antiquity only two 
vocations were reverenced for them- 
selves — war and statesmanship — the 
vocation of killing men and that of gov- 
erning or, more often, misgoverning 
them. A Plato or a Phidias, it is true, 
gained recognition, but because of the 
height of personal genius, not for the 
vocation's sake; while all the founda- 
tion work, on which civilization must 
ever rest — the tilling of the fields, 



14 The Vocation: Our Problem 

simple artisan labor — was done by 
slaves or by those but little removed 
from the condition of slavery. Thus 
Aristotle says: "It is impossible to live 
the life of a mechanic or laborer and 
at the same time devote oneself to the 
practice of virtue." ^ More completely 
he expresses the same view: " In a state 
in which the polity is perfect and the 
citizens are just men . . . the citizens 
ought not to lead a mechanical or com- 
mercial life; for such a life is ignoble 
and opposed to virtue. Nor again must 
the persons who are to be our citizens 
be husbandmen, as leisure which is im- 
possible in an agricultural life is equally 
essential to the culture of virtue and 
to political action." ^ 

The whole purport of Aristotle's ar- 
gument is that, of course, you cannot 
have culture without slavery. If there 

1 Politics, book III, chapter V, Welldon's trans- 
lation. 
^ Jbid., chapter IX, 



The Vocation: Our Problem 15 

are to be cultivated men at the top, then 
there must of necessity be slaves at the 
bottom, to do the work which, in the 
Greek view, it would be degrading for 
self-respecting free citizens to per- 
form. 

Similarly Plato says In the Laws: 
** He who in any way shares in the il- 
liberality of retail trades may be indicted 
for dishonoring his race by any one who 
likes . . . and if he appear to throw 
dirt upon his father's house by an un- 
worthy occupation, let him be impris- 
oned for a year and abstain from that 
sort of thing." ^ 

The Middle Age added a third voca- 
tion — that of the clergy — to the two 
respected in antiquity. War, states- 
manship and the priesthood : these were 
the three callings respected in the Mid- 
dle Age; there was no fourth. The 
schoolmaster had no recognition; the 

1 Lflwj, book XI, sections 919, 920, Jowett's trans- 
lation. 



1 6 The Vocation: Our Problem 

physician was the barber, and there was 
as much respect, or lack of respect, for 
one as for the other; while still all the 
basic work of civilization was done by 
those tied as serfs to the soil or but 
little above that plane. 

Indeed, the main growth In respect 
for work has come subsequent to the 
French and American revolutions. It 
Is not too much to say that there has 
been more progress In respect for hon- 
est work during the last hundred years 
than In all the preceding centuries of 
human history. There are, It Is true, 
honest vocations still not generally re- 
spected, and it is worth noting that just 
in these It Is most difficult to get good 
work done; but the progress has been 
amazing. 

It has been argued that the dress 
of the leisure class In all ages has been 
chosen because It indicated that the 
wearer did no useful work, and there- 



The Vocation: Our Problem 17 

fore was an aristocrat.^ Perhaps 
*' 'Twere to consider too curiously, to 
consider so;" but how Impossible it 
would be to do field labor or the ordi- 
nary work of the household in evening 
dress, or, worse, the knightly armor of 
the Middle Age. Even to-day a China- 
man of higher rank lets certain finger- 
nails grow as long as bird claws, thus 
proving he has not worked with his 
hands and hence is an aristocrat. 

Thus everywhere in the older so- 
ciety those who were free from the se- 
verer pressure of the struggle of life 
were respected because of that fact. It 
Is true they made their contribution — 
often a significant one ; but It was given 
somewhat patronizingly from above, 
through noblesse oblige — the obli- 
gation of nobility. To-day Increas- 
ingly we recognize that It Is a primary 

1 Veblen, Thorstein, The Theory of the Leisure 
Class, chapter VII. 



1 8 The Vocation: Our Problem 

obligation on every human being to pay 
his own way, to leave the world as well 
off as he finds it. Not that the contribu- 
tion must be made in forms the world 
rewards with money and reputation, 
but in some form it must be made, if 
the man or woman is to be even honest. 

This changed view shows how the 
whole problem has been transformed, 
through the coming up into the free 
struggle of life of an unnumbered multi- 
tude who yesterday lived only that 
someone else might live. To-day they 
are living for themselves, and, let us 
hope, in some measure for humanity. 
Thus, while the world is richer than in 
any past time, the tension of the strug- 
gle of life is more severe than in any 
period of history. The great ends of 
life, therefore, as never before, must 
be attained in and through the strug- 
gle of life, or we shall fail to reach 
them. 

The beautiful culture of the few In 



The Vocation: Our Problem 19 

the old Greek world was in part made 
possible by a saner view of life than 
ours, but largely it rested on the ter- 
rible foundation of human slavery. 
We have, therefore, a double problem: 
first, to reform the view of life so that 
we may come to prize more justly its 
real ends as against its adventitious in- 
terests; second, to substitute machinery 
for human slavery, using discovery and 
invention, not to increase tasteless lux- 
ury, but to free man and give leisure 
to all. Not until these ends are 
achieved, may we hope for a cultivation 
of the multitude comparable to that of 
the few in classic antiquity. 

In the past, culture was always the 
badge of a segregated class. Even 
Goethe in the very Wilhelm Meister 
cited as focussing on the problem of cul- 
ture through vocation, held that culture 
is of course impossible for the ordinary 
citizen as it is the heritage of the nobil- 
ity. The argument is, It is true, made 



20 The Vocation: Our Problem 

by a dramatic character; but that it is 
Goethe's own view is attested by his ac- 
tion, in choosing to be an attache of the 
Weimar court rather than an inde- 
pendent citizen in his native town, 
Frankfort. 

It was a beautiful culture the old 
society achieved in its aristocratic class. 
We have still among us surviving ex- 
amples of the gentleman and lady of 
the old regime. How charming they 
are, carrying the beauty and fragrance 
of an old-time, walled-in garden, pro- 
tected from the storms of the world out- 
side. Behavior echoing their lovely 
courtesy appears, even in our commer- 
cial age. It is still possible to see a 
gentleman remove his hat when a lady 
enters an elevator in one of our vast 
office buildings. Occasionally one wit- 
nesses a man give his seat to an older 
woman, even in an elevated train on 
that bridge of pandemonium (of all the 
devils) connecting New York and 



The Vocation: Our Problem 21; 

Brooklyn, and, still more rarely, one 
does see a woman remember to thank 
a gentleman for such a courtesy, even 
to-day. The experiences are so unusual, 
however, that when they come to us we 
are apt to remember them for weeks 
afterwards, as quite out of the ordinary 
routine of existence, lending a rare 
beauty to life. 

Indeed, we may even be glad the old- 
time gallantry is passing, if we can sub- 
stitute for it something a great deal 
larger and better. After all, the fine 
courtesy of the old society toward a lit- 
tle group of protected ladies was ac- 
companied by a very different attitude 
toward the mass of women caught in 
the economic struggle of life. Not the 
chivalry of nobility, but the culture of 
humanity is the need. 

There is, it is true, a protected class 
in our society, but its members are con- 
tinually changing. You can guarantee 
to your children your fortune, if you 



22 The Vocation: Our Problem 

have one, but not to your grandchildren. 
(When the brain power and moral en- 
ergy that built up the fortune disappear 
from the family stock, how quickly the 
fortune takes wings and flies away. 
The constant change in the members of 
the protected group prevents the perma- 
nent segregation of an aristocratic class ; 
and while social snobbery may, in con- 
sequence, seem more coarse and blatant, 
it really tends to disappear. If those 
who display it do not pass fast enough, 
it is always possible for the people to 
rise and hasten their exit, as was done 
with such memorable success in the 
French Revolution. 

Thus less than at any time In the past 
IS culture represented to-day by a seg- 
regated group above and apart. We 
cannot separate the ends of the spirit 
from the routine business of life as was 
done so often in the past. It is Impos- 
sible to wait until the serious work of 
life Is finished, and then hope to gain 



The Vocation: Our Problem 23 

culture. We must somehow find it 
through the action and experience of 
life, all along the way, or we shall fail 
of it altogether. Thus the problem of 
culture through the vocation is our 
problem as it has been that of no other 
age. 



II 

ACTION VERSUS DREAMS 

Since the vocation is a way of life, is 
it not a pity that it is currently regarded 
merely as an opportunity of making a 
living? It is that, and we have seen 
how imperative is the duty that each 
human being should give to the social 
whole at least as much as he receives 
from it. That, however, is merely pay- 
ing running expenses in the vocation of 
life ; and any business man will acknowl- 
edge that to carry on an undertaking 
for many years and succeed only in pay- 
ing running expenses is failure. The 
test of the business is In what is earned 
beyond that, and so Is it with life. 
Thus the true meaning of the vocation 
is as an open pathway to the great aims 

24 



Action Versus Dreams 25 

of life — culture and service ; and only 
when it is so regarded does it take its 
rightful place in our lives. 

Like all other phases of the art of 
life, the vocation can never be reduced 
to science. It is always a problem of 
the artistic adjustment of two factors, 
each of which is constantly changing. 
The whole sum of subjective capacities, 
differing every day, must somehow be 
adjusted to the whole sum of objective 
needs and demands of the world, also 
ever changing. Is it any wonder the 
problem is difficult? That is not the 
worst of it: action is inexorable limita- 
tion, compared to the ideal inspiring it. 
While we dream, we might do any- 
thing; when we act, out of the Infinity 
of possibilities, we affirm one poor, in- 
significant fraction. 

That explains many of the paradoxes 
of life, as, for instance, why our babies 
are so Interesting to us. The parent 
looks into the eyes of his two-years-old 



26 Action Versus Dreams 

child, and dreams of all the possibilities 
inherent in that little atom of humanity. 
That child might think Plato's thought, 
write Shakespeare's Hamlet, or live 
with the moral sublimity of St. Francis 
ofAssisi. Why not? 

" I am the owner of the sphere, 
Of the seven stars and the solar year, 
Of Caesar's hand and Plato's brain, 
Of Lord Christ's heart and Shakespeare's 
strain." 

Emerson Is right: all these potential- 
ities are in the humblest of us: give us 
time enough and opportunity enough, 
and we can develop limitlessly in any 
direction. Each Is a unit part, not a 
mechanical part, of humanity — a sort 
of germ-cell containing the possibilities 
of the whole. We may not be able to 
think Plato's thought to-day, but we 
may take one step forward in the intel- 
lectual life: give us eternity, and the 
point will be reached when we may think 



Action Versus Dreams 27 

Plato's thought. One may be far be- 
low the moral sublimity of St. Francis 
now; but one may climb a little with 
each step : if the number of possible 
steps is endless, no mountain summit of 
life Is unattainable. 

Infinite time and opportunity, how- 
ever, are just what never are given in 
this world, whatever be the truth for 
worlds to come. We must live this 
chapter; we have to plan for time as 
well as eternity. If we spend all the 
seventy years, more or less — usually 
less — granted to us here, merely in 
laying a foundation, we have no temple 
of life. If we lay a narrow founda- 
tion, and build each story out, wider 
and wider, as the structure grows, it 
falls to the ground and we have no 
temple of life. We must somehow 
both lay the foundation and erect the 
superstructure — see to it that we get 
something done, before the curtain falls 
on the brief chapter we call life. 



28 Action Versus Dreams 

Thus what the parent forgets, as he 
looks into the eyes of his Httle child, 
is that out of the endless wealth of 
potentialities, gathered up in this fresh 
incarnation of humanity, at best only a 
poor little fragment will be realized in 
the brief span of life given us in this 
world. That is one reason genius 
seldom survives the cradle. 

Emerson quotes from Thoreau's man- 
uscripts: *' The youth gets together his 
materials to build a bridge to the moon, 
or, perchance, a palace or temple on the 
earth, and, at length the middle-aged 
man concludes to build a woodshed with 
them." ^ That is just about the relation 
of the world of action to that of 
dreams; but this, after all, is the im- 
portant point: it is better to build one 
honest woodshed that will keep the fuel 
for the fires of life dry, than it is to go 
on dreaming forever of impossible cas- 

1 Lectures and Biographical Sketches, p. 449. 



Action Versus Dreams 29 

ties in Spain; and the wonder is that 
when you have built the woodshed you 
own the castle. The ideal is vain and 
illusory just so long as you dwell in the 
world of dreams; the whole ideal be- 
comes real when, through your strug- 
gle, a mere fragment of it is realized. 

In one of the passages of supreme 
life-wisdom in Wilhelm Meister, Goethe 
says: "Life lies before us, as a huge 
quarry lies before the architect: he de- 
serves not the name of architect, ex- 
cept when, out of this fortuitous mass, 
he can combine, with the greatest econ- 
omy, and fitness, and durability, some 
form, the pattern of which originated 
in his spirit. All things without us, nay 
I may add, all things on us, are mere 
elements: but deep within us lies the 
creative force, which out of these can 
produce what they were meant to be; 
and which leaves us neither sleep nor 
rest, till in one way or another, without 



30 Action Versus Dreams 

us or on us, that same have been pro- 
duced." ^ 

Thus each of us is artist, the world 
is our mountain of marble, and we own 
it all. We may choose one block, cast 
it aside, choose another and another, 
each more wonderfully veined: the 
mountain is ours. This, however, is 
the significant point: unless we do de- 
cide upon a single block, and work at it 
so long and faithfully that in the end 
we have chipped off all the superfluous 
marble and released the statue (Michael 
Angelo believed God placed in every 
block) it means nothing that we own the 
mountain. Rather, we do own the 
mountain when we have achieved the 
single statue, and only then. 

In every vocation the meaning of the 
work is less in the thing done than in 
the growth of the man through the do- 
ing. It is so in every field of science. 
Why, in algebra and geometry, does 

'^Apprenticeship^ translated by Carlyle, book VI. 



Action Versus Dreams 3 1 

the wise teacher insist upon the con- 
stant solution of original problems? 
Because the aim is, not that the stu- 
dent should take so many steps, mem- 
orize so many rules, but that he should 
develop the power to deal with fresh 
problems : the growth of his mind, not 
the acquisition of mental material, is the 
deeper aim. So to-day everywhere we 
insist that the natural sciences must be 
taught by laboratory and field methods. 
Such methods are laborious and slow: 
a student may learn more facts and 
laws in a week's work with a well 
written text-book, than he can acquire 
in a whole term of laboratory and 
field work. Why require the slower 
method? Because a little of the 
power to look Nature in the face and 
see one fact at first hand, is worth 
more than memorizing the best Sixteen 
Weeks in Zoology anyone ever com- 
piled. 

As with science, so in art. Indeed, 



32 Action Versus Dreams 

the fine arts furnish the best of sym- 
bols of what is possible in the vocation. 
Art is the freest vocation on earth. 
The artist is less bound by the influence 
of public opinion, the restrictions of so- 
ciety, than the worker in any other 
field. Further, if the artist is master 
of the technique of his art, he can ex- 
press through it his loftiest dream, as 
is possible in no other way of life. 
When we work with human beings, 
even in the plastic period of childhood, 
we find them resistant, not wholly re- 
sponsive to our touch; but one who 
works in form and color on canvas or 
wall, who chisels the plastic beauty of 
marble statues, who wakens the har- 
mony of music or molds the melody and 
imagery of poetry, can embody per- 
fectly his highest ideal. 

Though art has this high power, why 
should we continue creating it ever 
anew? If a student devotes his life to 



Action Versus Dreams 33 

the task, he cannot master the pictures 
already painted, nor read through more 
than one alcove In the dust-covered li- 
brary containing the books of the past. 
Why paint fresh pictures to hang in 
new galleries, carve statues to crowd 
other marble halls, continue the writing 
of books world without end? Then, 
too, art seems dead, compared to the 
living world of nature and humanity. 
The loveliest landscape-painting fixes 
but one mood of the infinitely varied 
and changing beauty of Nature, the 
noblest portrait, but one of the myriad 
expressions that fleet across the face. 
The novel or drama gives a single 
chapter, cold and crystallized, from 
the Infinite-changing, innumerable-leaved 
volume of life. Why toil at the art? 
Emerson said: "Converse with a 
mind that Is grandly simple, and litera- 
ture looks like word-catching. The 
simplest utterances are worthiest to be 



34 Action Versus Dreams 

written, yet they are so cheap and so 
things of course, that in the infinite 
riches of the soul it is like gathering a 
few pebbles off the ground, or bottling 
a little air in a phial, when the whole 
earth and the whole atmosphere are 
ours." ^ Since we have the ocean of 
mind, why pick up the pebbles of litera- 
ture and preserve them in the cabinet 
of the past? 

There is an answer to the question: 
every work of art is a sort of shell, 
through which the human spirit has 
grown. Wh©n Michael Angelo paints 
the ceiling o»f the Sistine Chapel, it is 
not only he who has grown in power 
to see and to create: for all who can 
see and respond, the drama of humanity 
is unrolled across the ceiling, while the 
colors and figures last. When Shake- 
speare achieves a Hamlet^ or Goethe a 
Faust, it is not merely two more books 
to add to the myriad of the past: each 

1 Essays, First Series, The Over-Soul. 



Action Versus Dreams 35 

IS an open door to the appreciation of 
the infinite mystery of man. Art is a 
way of life for the artist, for his world 
and for the afterworld. 



Ill 

DEAD WORK 

It may be said that while it is true the 
vocation of art is a way of life, few 
of us are called to that high path, and 
to us the lesson does not apply. The 
answer is simple: there is no honest 
vocation that cannot be made to some 
extent a fine art. That is, in every 
honest vocation, each day, growth is 
possible, if the work is loyally done; 
and that, we have seen, is the meaning 
of art. Indeed, the one supreme fine 
art is the art of living, and the particu- 
lar vocation gets its meaning as a 
phase of that highest art. 

In most vocations, it is true, there is 
so much dull routine work that we can 
discover little growth in the action of 

36 



Dead Work 37 

the single day. To go to the shop and 
sell a spool of thread and a paper of 
pins, to make the physician's dally 
round, prescribing for those who are 
HI and the larger number who think 
they are, to work over the lawyer's 
brief for some petty quarrel, to write 
sermons for congregations that will not 
listen and that demand the sermon 
shorter every week — it all seems such 
a blind mill-wheel grind that one sees 
little progress in the day. 

This is especially true of much of 
the work women have been called to do, 
as in the care of children. The mother 
dresses her child up and sends him out 
to play; he gets dirty and comes in. 
She dresses him again and sends him 
out; he gets dirty and comes in; and so 
on until night comes or the clothes give 
out and her patience is at an end. She 
seems merely to be going around and 
around in a blind routine. A still bet- 
ter illustration is the task of washing 



38 Dead Work 

dishes. Getting dinner is not so bad 
— that is an anticipatory task, looking 
forward to a joy that is coming; but 
when one has eaten dinner, and the 
smell of the dirty dishes offends one, 
to have to wash and wipe them and put 
them away, in the assurance that within 
five hours the same dishes must be 
taken down and dirtied over again — 
that does seem the final symbol of sheer 
dead work. It Is, nevertheless, just 
such work, done cheerfully and loyally, 
to a high purpose, through the succes- 
sion of days, that builds Into the human 
spirit the noblest elements of culture. 
What then do we mean by " culture " — 
some esoteric knowledge or remote 
adornment of hfe? Surely not. Its 
foundation elements are: loyalty to the 
task in hand, the trained will that does 
not yield to obstacles, cheerful courage 
in meeting the exigencies that come, 
serenity maintained amid the petty dis- 
tractions of life, holding the vision of 



Dead Work 39 

the Ideal across the sand wastes and 
through the valley of the shadows: 
these are the basic elements of culture, 
and they are built into the spirit of a 
man or a woman by the loyal doing of 
dead work through the succession of 
days. 

Suppose you are in trouble, and need 
counsel on some complex question of 
life : to whom do you go — to the most 
learned man of your acquaintance? 
Well, sometimes, and occasionally, 
rightly; but more often you go to some 
out of the way person — a wife and 
mother who has lived through a life- 
time of cheerful, devoted service. You 
state your problem and get the answer. 
Whence comes It? Not from book 
learning, but from the insight bred of 
earnest living, of loyally fulfilling the 
routine work of life, always with a high 
aim, through the succession of days and 
years. To see true, one must be true. 
An utterly false man would get nothing 



'40 Dead Work 

of the light of God's truth but the 
shadow it casts. Knowledge and wis- 
dom are not upon the same plane. 
Knowledge is of fact; wisdom, of truth. 
One may know much, and not be wise 
at a;ll; while, on the contrary, one may 
be quite without learning, and yet be 
deeply wise. Knowledge is a root 
from which the flower of wisdom may 
or may not blossom ; but only when the 
root is planted in the soil of sincerity 
may the flower bloom. That is why 
persons who " always ring true " are 
found almost as often among those who 
have little conventional education as 
among the learned. Only with the dis- 
cipline of long-continued, earnest work, 
can knowledge and refinement co- 
operate in developing wisdom. 

Then, too, there is an almost univer- 
sal optical illusion with reference to 
work: each of us is fully conscious of 
the dead work in his own calling, be- 
cause he must fulfill It; with the tasks 



Dead Work 4I 

of others, he sees only the finished 
product. Thus each is inclined to ex- 
aggerate the dead work in his own vo- 
cation and to envy the apparently easier 
and happier tasks of others. You sit 
down in an audience room, and some 
master at the piano sweeps you out on 
to the bosom of the sea of emotion, 
playing with you at his will. The 
evening of melody is over; there is the 
moment of awed silence and then the 
storm of applause; you go home ex- 
claiming, " What genius ! " O yes, it 
is genius: some one has defined genius 
as the capacity for hard work. Genius 
Is more than that — much more; but no 
exaggerated talent would take a man 
far, without the capacity for hard 
work; and what you forget, as you 
listen to the finished art of the master 
genius. Is the days and nights of con- 
secrated toil, foregoing, not only dis- 
sipation, but even Innocent pleasures 
others take as their natural right, that 



42 Dead Work 

the artist might master and keep the 
mastery of the technique of his art. 

The thing that seems to be done most 
easily, costs most in the doing and has 
been paid for, invariably, out of the 
life. It is when men work with most 
exhausting intensity, on the basis of a 
life-time of training, that they work 
with most apparent ease. This world 
is no lottery, where you take a chance 
ticket and run your risk of winning or 
losing a prize, but serious business, 
where nothing worth while comes any 
other way than through dead, hard 
work carried through the days and 
years. One never truly possesses any- 
thing one has not earned by hard effort. 
To possess money, you must have 
earned money, or you do not know its 
worth, nor how to spend It aright. To 
possess knowledge, you must have 
earned knowledge; and the brilHant 
student who slides through college on 
his wits, coaching up just before ex- 



Dead Work 43 

amination and winning fairly good 
grades, loses in the slower race of life 
beside even the ungifted plodder, who 
has taken faithfully every hard step of 
the road. 

It is said of Euclid, formulator of the 
earliest of the sciences, geometry, that 
on one occasion he was called in to 
teach a certain king of Egypt his new 
science. He began as we begin, with 
definition, axiom and proposition — we 
have not improved appreciably upon 
his text-book; and the king grew rest- 
less and indignant: "Must a Pharaoh 
learn like a common slave?" Euclid, 
with that pride in knowing one thing 
well, that everyone ought to have who 
knows one science thoroughly to the 
end, responded: "There is no royal 
road to geometry!" We can univer- 
salize the statement: there Is no royal 
road to anything on earth — perhaps In 
heaven either — worth having, except 
the one broad, open highway, with no 



44 Dead Work 

toll-gates upon It, of dead, hard, con- 
sistent work through the days and 
years. Spinoza said — it is the last 
word in his Ethic: " All noble things 
are as difficult as they are rare ; " and 
we may add, they are rare because they 
are difficult. 



SHAM AND SINCERITY 

While the cheerful performance of 
routine work is indispensable to all 
great achievement, and, done to a high 
purpose, develops fine qualities of the 
spirit, we must frankly admit that there 
may be too much dead work in a life. 
Then the result is to benumb the spirit 
and dwarf the faculties. One must be 
capable of intense concentration to 
achieve anything worth while, but one 
must know when to remove the pres- 
sure. Ceaseless effort is mediocrity; 
evaded effort is self-deception; rightly 
balanced effort is the key to genius. To 
drive oneself with relentless will; then 
to let go and respond with open, care- 
free mind and heart — these together, 

45 



46 Sham and Sincerity 

are great living; either alone means 
hopeless deterioration. 

When the vision of the ideal is lost, 
the evil consequences of unbalanced 
routine work follow with multiplied 
rapidity. The more mechanical the 
action, the graver is the danger of 
digging the ruts of the calling so deep 
that one loses all vision out from them. 
With the Invention and refining of ever 
more complicated machinery, supplant- 
ing the trained artisan by the unskilled 
manipulator of the single lever of a 
vast machine, this danger has multiplied 
with ominous celerity in the indus- 
trial world. Hence the necessity for 
shortening the hours of such labor and 
balancing the mechanical work by other 
liberalizing forms of activity. 

There is a compensating advantage, 
however, in the most mechanical form 
of labor (rightly limited in hours) in 
the very fact that the action tends so 
quickly to become automatic. This 



Sham and Sincerity 47 

leaves the mind free for thought, If 
there is mental resource. Such resource 
is a mark of the highest cultivation. 
Thus, paradoxical as it now seems, in 
an ideal social adjustment only highly 
cultivated persons would perform me- 
chanical phases of industrial activity. 

If mechanical work has the limita- 
tions cited, it is what we call the higher 
vocations that Involve just the gravest 
dangers, for in these we are subject 
to all sorts of pressures and bonds 
from social, forces, and immediate 
worldly success often results from pre- 
tense and deceit. Thoreau understood 
that. He found he could not preach, 
in a conventional pulpit, and be honest, 
because he would have to say what 
would please his congregation. He 
could not teach school, because his be- 
havior and teaching would have to fit 
the views of his patrons.^ So he 

1 " I have thoroughly tried school-keeping, and 
found that my expenses were in proportion, or rather 



48 Sham and Sincerity 

earned his living by a simple form of 
mechanical labor, lived on a few cents 
a day, and taught what he believed, 
without payment. That is one solu- 
tion, but not attractive to many. 

" The public is the greatest of 
sophists," said Plato; and for a time 
the premium does seem to be placed 
on appearance rather than reality. 
Take so high a calling as that of a min- 
ister, the physician of the spirit: ex- 
pected to be a moral model in the com- 
munity (which none of us is worthy to 
be), preaching largely to women, with 
little opportunity for frank comrade- 
ship with the men of his congregation, 
pushed by the world's demand on to 
a pedestal apart — the danger is that 

out of proportion, to my income, for I was obliged 
to dress and train, not to say think and believe, 
accordingly, and I lost my time into the bargain. 
As I did not teach for the good of my fellow-men, 
but simply for a livelihood, this was a failure.'' 
Thoreau, Walden, p. no, Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 
Boston. 



Sham and Sincerity 49 

he will come to dwell on how he ap- 
pears rather than what he is, which is 
the high road to hypocrisy. Thus the 
minister who remains entirely sincere, 
with no touch of pretense or affecta- 
tion, is a saint of the spirit and should 
be honored as such. 

For a time it aids the physician to 
assume an air of mysterious omnis- 
cience, whimsically illustrated in Latin 
prescriptions. It is further to his ad- 
vantage that many persons should be 
ill, as long a time as possible. You see 
the temptation. The Chinese, with 
their usual contradiction of Western 
civilization, seem alone to have solved 
the problem. With them, we are told, 
the physician receives a salary while 
every member of the family is entirely 
well. One case of illness stops the pay 
till the patient is cured. That is one 
way! 

It is to the lawyer's interest that per- 
sons should quarrel, and that recon- 



^O Sham and Sincerity 

dilation should be long and difficult. 
The more the law is filled with intri- 
cate complexities and absurd technicali- 
ties, the greater is the need for the pro- 
fessional lawyer and the larger his fees. 
Further, the system that pays him to 
give his mind to the task of making 
seem true, what often he does not be- 
lieve true, involves grave strain on his 
own mental integrity. There are ex- 
amples where great lawyers have re- 
fused to undertake the defense of any 
accused person in whose innocence they 
did not sincerely believe, but the young 
practitioner in criminal law will tell you 
it Is quite Impossible to follow that rule 
and win a career. 

What vocation Is higher than that of 
the teacher, concerned with building the 
human spirit In children and young 
people? How often, with all the high 
opportunities of the calling, one finds 
the teacher acquiring all the unfortu- 
nate "ear-marks" of the vocation — > 



Sham and Sincerity 51 

the assertive manner, high-pitched 
voice, didactic assurance in express- 
ing narrow opinions — characteristics 
springing from dealing habitually with 
immature minds and exercising au- 
thority over them. 

James Mill pointed out that maga- 
zine literature must succeed in the week 
or month in which it Is published, and 
therefore the easiest way to success Is 
to catch and express just the whim on 
the surface of public opinion. The 
temptation so to cater is strong on 
writer, editor and publisher alike. Fur- 
ther, responding to some vulgar interest 
of the moment assures commercial suc- 
cess to drama, novel or article. In 
consequence we have the current mass 
of prurient stuff exploiting the sex In- 
stinct in unworthy fashion. 

So, in all fields, the world bribes Its 
leaders to be their worst selves. I 
know public teachers and ministers who 
admit frankly that they overstate, hold- 



j52 Sham and Sincerity 

ing that It is the only way to make ideas 
prevail. The temptation to this vice 
is strong upon every leader, but what is 
its result? At the moment, the audi- 
ence responds with applause, but at 
home, afterwards, those who think are 
apt to say, ''Why, that is not true." 
Thus the transient effect is obtained at 
the expense of alienating the very per- 
sons who should be won to the cause, 
while the speaker's own mind is vitiated. 

Similarly dangerous is the lure of 
the epigram. A narrow half-truth 
can be phrased with ghtterlng brilliancy; 
whole truths are quiet and balanced. 
Thus the speaker and writer is con- 
stantly tempted to sacrifice truth to 
epigrammatic cleverness, and sane 
vision to brilliant effect. One might 
mention widely popular, even great, 
names among those caught in this trap 
that menaces every rambler in the forest 
of thought. 

I recall a modern educator (James 



Sham and Sincerity 53 

L. Hughes) remarking that he had 
never heard an audience applaud a 
greatly original thought. The state- 
ment is perhaps extreme; but when you 
hear such a thought expressed, your 
inclination is not to make a noise; 
rather it is to ask, "Is that true?'* 
meeting the challenge of the original 
thought with your own active mind. 
On the other hand, there is a trick of 
making almost any audience applaud. 
The speaker does not need to think at 
all, for thinking is hard work, and 
every audience is glad to be relieved 
of it. No, it is necessary only to use 
frequently, in an unctuous voice, those 
catch-words of conventional morality 
— home, country and mother — and 
almost any audience will applaud. 
Those who have not been thinking, sud- 
denly hear these phrases, and know 
that it is time to applaud. All those 
who have been living evil lives make 
the most noise, because they want to 



54 Sham and Sincerity 

cover their trail by getting into the 
front rank of those applauding conven- 
tional morality. The few who are 
really thinking may sit silently dis- 
gusted, but they do not come next time, 
so then the whole audience applauds. 

This goes on for a considerable time, 
and then people awaken. *' Why," 
they say, "this is clap-trap and sham; 
kick the charlatan out!" Now it is 
right that the charlatan should be so 
punished, but the world that has bribed 
him to be his worst self has not earned 
the right to administer the kick. 

There is, of course, another side to 
all this. If humanity is ever ready to 
respond to clap-trap and sham, to pre- 
tense and the sensational appeal, so it is 
always ready to respond to the most 
high, to the noblest truth voiced in the 
simplest form. The highest appeals 
to the lowest: were this not true, there 
would be no hope for democracy. It 
takes genius, however, to grasp and 



Sham and Sincerity ^55 

express quite simply the heart of hu- 
manity; and genius is rare. 

Thus every vocation has Its own 
dangers, and these are great just in pro- 
portion to the opportunity for culture 
and service. The larger the oppor- 
tunity, the easier the fall. The only 
safeguard is everlasting effort and utter 
sincerity. One must keep constantly 
before one that the way of appearances 
is the way of death, the way of reality 
is the way of life. One must cling to 
this unfailingly as the basic principle 
of all action, even when the faith is 
blind and the material rewards seem to 
be given to pretense and sham. Indeed, 
the fundamental attitude of the doer 
always determines the value of the 
thing done. The work is worth just 
the measure of manhood and woman- 
hood expressed in it — never more, 
and, we may be thankful, never less. 



V 

VOCATION AND AVOCATION 

Even when one succeeds in avoiding the 
dangers of the specific caUing, in any 
vocation one may discover, after a 
time, that one has used up much of the 
opportunity for culture and, sometimes, 
even for service. Routine repetition 
teaches, but not what original achieve- 
ment taught. If one needs heroic 
ability for dead work, to make the vo- 
cation a way of life one needs, as well, 
capacity for constant readjustment and 
the grasping of fresh opportunity. 
When one has achieved supremely, it is 
time to do something else. Success 
may tempt one to travel the same rut- 
worn road again, where failure chal- 
lenges one to make a fresh start. 

56 



Vocation and Avocation 57 

When one discovers that the best les- 
sons have been learned in a certain 
field of work and the main contribu- 
tion given, what then is to be done? 
More often than, in this country espe- 
cially, we are apt to beheve possible, 
one may change one's work. We are 
so anxious to get settled early In life 
that we are apt to think the first friend- 
ship we form Is our life comradeship. 
Sometimes it is, much more often it 
distinctly is not. So we imagine the 
first significant work we find is our life 
call. Sometimes it is; more often it 
is but a stepping-stone in the path. 
Thus if we were willing to estimate life 
in terms higher than money and reputa- 
tion, more often than usually seems pos- 
sible we might pass from one oppor- 
tunity to another. 

Thoreau, you remember, set out in 
youth to make a composition pencil 
superior to the imported graphite one. 
After some experiments and labor, he 



^8 Vocation and Avocation 

succeeded, and his friends thought that 
now his success in life was assured and 
his path settled. To their surprise 
and chagrin he refused ever to make 
another. "Why should I? I have 
learned that lesson. Why should I 
repeat myself ?'' Unpractical, even 
foolish, but sublimely foolish; and 
Thoreau's choice may serve as a whim- 
sical illustration of that spirit of ever 
pushing onward which is the sound at- 
titude in the vocation. 

Often, however, we may not follow 
freely the choice and need of our own 
spirit. We have accepted responsibili- 
ties, and must loyally fulfill them. 
The way to a larger opportunity is 
never meanly sneaking out from under 
the little duty of to-day, but climbing 
bravely through it and off the top; and 
then the better chance usually comes. 
Thus often one must, for duty's sake, 
continue in a field of work quite inade- 
quate for the fullest culture and service. 



Vocation and Avocation 59 

Even then there is something we 
may do : we may cultivate an avoca- 
tion In the margin of life. It is true, 
the words " vocation " and " avoca- 
tion " are currently used synonymously. 
That is a pity: to waste two words 
on one id^a when both are needed 
for distinct conceptions. A man's vo- 
cation is his business in life; his avoca- 
tion is his business aside from his busi- 
ness in life. The one Is the main line 
of action; the other, the thing he does 
in addition, because he chooses It. 

For Instance, we think of William 
Cullen Bryant as a poet — the earliest 
of our distinctively artistic American 
poets. We forget that William Cullen 
Bryant paid running expenses In the 
business of his life by working year 
after year at his desk in New York as 
journalist, and that the poetry, by which 
he always will be remembered, was 
achieved In the margin of life that most 
persons waste. 



6o Vocation and Avocation 

So John Stuart Mill is to us a great 
democrat, leader of the woman's move- 
ment, radical thinker, writer of texts in 
logic and political economy that remain 
among the best we have. Again we 
forget that Mill paid running expenses 
in the business of his life by working 
for thirty-five years, from the age of 
seventeen to that of fifty-two, six days 
in the week, eleven months in the year, 
at his desk in the office of the East In- 
dia Company in London, drafting tele- 
grams and letters for the government 
of the native states of India; and all 
the great work by which the world will 
remember him was done in the margin 
of time most persons waste and some 
deliberately try to kill. " Killing 
time'' — murdering opportunity! 

I recall, in the letters of Matthew 
Arnold, published some years ago, sev- 
eral passages in which Arnold expresses 
his regret that he cannot write poetry 
and criticism as he would, because of 



Vocation and Avocation 6i 

the dissipating effect of his duties as 
Inspector of Schools. It comes over 
one with a shock of surprise that Mat- 
thew Arnold — poet, essayist, leader in 
advanced thinking in his generation — 
earned his living by the exhausting 
labor of inspecting schools and report- 
ing upon them to the British govern- 
ment, and that his literary work repre- 
sents an avocation, pursued In such 
leisure as he could command. 

Now it Is a pity that England should 
have kept John Stuart Mill for thirty- 
five years in the office of the East India 
Company, and that she should have 
held Matthew Arnold for the same 
period of time to the wearisome task 
of School Inspector. The right atti- 
tude for Mill and Arnold, however, was 
not to do as so many young persons 
who like to think they have the artistic 
temperament are apt to do — to sit 
down and bewail the world's failure to 
appreciate their greatness, to complain 



62 Vocation and Avocation 

that some rich man does not send 
them to Europe, that they must remain 
" mute, inglorious Miltons " — not to 
do that; but to go earnestly to work 
and earn their living in some honest vo- 
cation, and do the other thing also, as 
an avocation. 

With this combination of activities, 
the culture through the vocation is 
multiplied. Read the two brief but 
pregnant pages In which John Stuart 
Mill tells of the education that came to 
him from his thirty-five years' work 
for the East India Company — how he 
learned statesmanship, to make ideas 
prevail, to adjust his own convictions to 
the minds of others, to get the best pos- 
sible when he could not attain all he de- 
sired — and you realize that If nine out 
of ten of our college professors and 
writers In sociology and political econ- 
omy were forced to take ten years of 
MIlFs drudgery, we should have far 



Vocation and Avocation 63 

saner teaching and much wiser books 
In the fields mentioned. 

Blessed, therefore, Is the man or 
woman with a hobby, with some big, 
strong, Intellectual or artistic Interest 
aside from the main line of work. In 
the arithmetic of the spirit two things 
may be less than one. If your life is 
very much over-burdened with routine 
work, then add another task, and the 
strain of the whole is less than that of 
the part. This cannot be shown In a 
sum upon the blackboard, but it Is 
easy to prove in life. Every student 
ought to know that If he has just so 
many hours to work, and will subtract 
one hour a day and spend It In healthy 
play or vigorous physical action, he has 
more time left for his studies. Every 
over-worked mother should know that 
if, from the time she has to give to the 
ceaseless demand of her children, she 
will regularly take a half-hour each day 



64 Vocation and Avocation 

apart for herself, refusing to let the 
children break in upon her unless in a 
matter of great seriousness, she has 
more time left for her children — I 
mean, of course, she has more to give 
in the time that remains. 

Thus in the main path of life it Is 
true that two tasks are often done more 
easily than one, and the cultivation of 
some strong interest as an avocation, 
not only achieves the direct result there, 
but sends one back to the vocation re- 
freshed, inspired, and so better equipped 
to attain the great ends of life. 



VI 

WORK: A WAY OF LIFE 

Not only culture and service may be 
achieved through earnest work, but 
sanity as well. Pessimism and despair 
are the children of idleness and dis- 
sipation — not immediately, to be sure ; 
since they are contagious diseases, and 
pass from mind to mind, as physically 
contagious diseases pass from body to 
body. As we consider dirt and unclean 
living the originating causes of small- 
pox and diphtheria, so idleness and 
dissipation are the originating causes 
of pessimism and despair. It is inter- 
esting to note that there is hardly a 
great pessimist, in all the ages, who, at 
any time in his life, had to earn his 
living by the work of his own hands. 

6s 



66 Work: A Way of Life 

Such work brings one so close to the 
hard, beneficent laws of Nature, that 
one does not doubt the sanity of the 
universe at the heart. The only way 
to keep faith with one's ideals is end- 
lessly to struggle to realize them. 
When the middle-aged man says : " O, 
yes, I used to beheve in ideals, I 
started out with them, but I found they 
would not work in the business of life, 
and so I abandoned them; " he may not 
know it, but his confession is his own 
condemnation. Had he struggled con- 
sistently to realize his ideals, he would 
not have lost his faith in them. They 
would have changed, it is true — the 
man's ideals differ from those of the 
boy, but they would have been the na- 
tural children of the latter. No one 
who is loyal to the ideal, in all the 
conduct of life, ever loses faith in the 
essential soundness of the universe at 
the heart. 

Thus everyone needs a vocation — - 



Work: A Way of Life 67 

rich or poor, cultivated or ignorant, 
man or woman, in the home or out of 
it — each of us must find a vocation 
and fulfill loyally our work in it, to 
achieve and keep the sane, affirmative 
wisdom that is the basis of all noble 
living. 

Whether the work is in vocation or 
avocation, the spirit and attitude of the 
doer determines the worth of the thing 
done. There are, in fact, three widely 
different ways in which we may regard 
our work. First, it may be viewed in 
the purely commercial spirit, merely as 
a business. The work is done honestly, 
we are justly paid for it, and the ac- 
count is squared. Good work is done 
that way, but never the best work. 

Higher than the commercial, is the 
professional spirit, which looks upon 
the vocation as a profession, up to 
the standard of which one must live. 
There is a conscious demand for more 
of this esprit de corps — spirit of the 



68 Work: A Way of Life 

calling — in certain higher vocations 
to-day. Surely there should be as much 
of it among ministers and teachers, as 
among physicians and lawyers. The 
ethics of the calling holds men to bet- 
ter work than results from the merely 
commercial spirit. The scientist, for 
instance, feels that because he is a 
scientist he is obHgated to do his re- 
search and write his monograph. 
Sometimes, it Is true, he has nothing to 
say, and monographs do get printed 
that would better not have seen the 
light; nevertheless the professional 
spirit results in much good work ac- 
complished. 

The best work, however, comes 
neither from the commercial nor the 
professional spirit, but only from view- 
ing our vocation as an opportunity and 
a mission, as a way of life for ourselves 
and others. It is this attitude alone, 
consistently and reverently held, that 
will enable us to go forward in the vo- 



Work: A Way of Life 69 

cation, being and not seeming, and so 
avoiding the dangers that menace in 
proportion as the calling is high. Those 
who have made the great sacrifices and 
fulfilled the loftiest missions have never 
done the work primarily for money or 
fame. Their service was given freely, 
out of the heart of life, and even when 
the result to them was martyrdom, they 
paid gladly the price. Fires of martyr- 
dom may illuminate, even as sunlight: 
they realized that the main thing is, not 
the source of the light, but that men 
should see. With this vision, they 
suffered cheerfully for life's sake. 
Though called to less steep and heroic 
paths, it is the same high attitude that 
gives meaning to our work. Only when 
it is done for life's sake — for culture, 
service and wisdom — is it supremely 
worth while. 

The humblest work, moreover, done 
in that spirit, can carry the loftiest 
ideal. It was said that a cup of cold 



70 Work: A Way of Life 

water might be so given as to express 
the whole gospel of human brother- 
hood; and it may be. Let one look 
back over one's life, and one will find 
that the high-water marks of memory 
are the little — not unremembered — 
acts of kindness and of love, those have 
done for us who loved us — actions so 
slight that one might hesitate to tell 
them over to one's intimate friend, 
lest he misunderstand — the gift of a 
flower, the little courtesies that made 
the day sweet; yet these are the actions 
that give fragrance to the memories of 
the years. 

Thus it is not the size of the deed, 
but the ideal it carries, that determines 
its worth. Epictetus said, " Let us be 
willing to do all things to Zeus : " let 
us be willing to do all things to God — 
to our own highest ideal; and then the 
humblest action is transfigured with the 
spirit it carries. Emerson said, " Let 
the great soul incarnated in some 



Work: A Way of Life 71 

woman's form, poor and sad and single, 
in some Dolly or Joan, go out to serv- 
ice and sweep chambers and scour 
floors, and its effulgent daybeams can- 
not be mufiled or hid, but to sweep and 
scour will instantly appear supreme and 
beautiful actions, the top and radiance 
of human life, and all people will get 
mops and brooms." ^ The trouble is, 
about the time we have recovered our 
broom from its dust-covered corner, 
the great soul, as Emerson indicates, is 
doing something else, and then sweep- 
ing is apt to seem to us very unlovely 
work. 

Vocations are then " higher " and 
" lower " only as they express more or 
less of the ideal and consecration of the 
spirit, and any honest vocation may ex- 
press it all. Shoes into which a man 
has sewn character are worth wearing; 
they will keep the water out. A house 

1 Spiritual Laws, in Essays, First Series , pp. 156, 
157. 



72 Work: A Way of Life 

into which a man has built character 
is good to live in; it will be weather- 
tight. Books into which a man has 
written character are worth reading; 
they will contain sound thought. In- 
deed, there are persons who, for van- 
ity's and reputation's sake, are vainly 
dawdling in some supposedly " higher '* 
vocation, who would better be doing 
honestly some simple form of hand 
labor, that could truly express their 
character and so be a way of life and 
service. Thus, always, the worth of 
the work, to the doer of it and to the 
world he serves, is determined by the 
ideal it carries and the spirit In which 
it is done. 

Whatever the life-call may be, it is 
therefore Indispensable that we rev- 
erence our work, to make of It a way 
of life. He who looks down upon his 
calling Is sure to awaken some day to 
find that the work has slipped out of his 
reach to a plane he can no longer attain. 



Work: A Way of Life .73 

Any honest vocation is worth all the 
consecration and effort one can summon. 
It is an optical illusion that makes the 
task at hand seem commonplace, the 
far-off, significant. The mountains 
near-by appear rocks and stubble-fields; 
in the distance they are clothed with 
blue beauty, majestically outlined against 
the sky. Similarly, we see about us the 
prosaic detail of life, while in far-off 
times great deeds and lives appear 
splendidly outlined against the gray 
horizon of the past. So we are apt to 
think that if we had but been born in 
some distant time and place, we too 
would have lived heroically to the great 
causes then challenging men. How 
gladly would we have died at Ther- 
mopylae, fought at Bunker Hill, shared 
the prison of Socrates or stood with 
Bruno at the stake I Illusion — sheer 
illusion of time and place! Life has 
always been commonplace to common- 
place people; it has been sublime only 



74 Work: A Way of Life 

when men have lived sublimely. Every 
great cause that ever challenged the 
support of men demands our service to- 
day. The only Holy Land is the 
ground under our feet; the one Golden 
Age is the better time we may help 
bring in; the Kingdom of Heaven is 
here when we live it from within. To 
recognize this moment as the supreme 
opportunity, to reverence the little task 
at hand as the highest call, is the one 
way to make of the vocation a path to 
the achievement, in ever growing meas- 
ure, of culture, service, sanity and 
wisdom. 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



029 445 240 



